


Bright at the End of the Day

by Vehemently



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 15:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vehemently/pseuds/Vehemently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is it: A girl walks into a bar.<br/>Tagline: But it's early and Ellen is lonely and she's such a small, pointy-faced young woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright at the End of the Day

When the sun sets as early as it does in February, happy hour can start at 3 in the afternoon. That goes double with a clientele that's about 80% nocturnal; they toast themselves with one shot for luck, and promise to come back for the bottle if they live. Ellen hasn't seen that promise broken in a while.

She is checking the levels in the more expensive hard stuff -- she carries fifteen kinds of whiskey, if you count the rye -- when the door rings open a bit early. The slim silhouette in shadow can't help but make her startle. But it can't be Jo; her last postcard only came a day ago, and the shoulders are all wrong. Jo is confident, like her mother. She wouldn't need to put on that kind of bravado, not in this building.

"Afternoon," Ellen calls, and turns back to the whiskey. She doesn't get a greeting back, just the shuffle of feet on the floor. More than one pair. She finishes up with her task, marking the sheet on the wall, and gets a look. Now the door's closed, her customers are warm-colored, inside-people, not quite so stark as February's failing daylight made them. It's a man and a woman, both dark-haired and young, the man tall and broad and fascinated with his hands. The woman unbuttons her coat and takes a deep breath.

"Are you open yet? We just got off the highway." That wasn't what she'd been meaning to say. Ellen eyeballs this pair as she goes about her business.

"I can be persuaded. Don't get much business for another hour yet. What brings you out here?"

The man and woman glance at each other. They've been hanging around with each other a long time, to get a shorthand like that. The woman says, "We came looking for a place." She puts her skinny white hands on the bar, flat like she's showing them to be empty. "Hoping to find some people with similar experiences to ours, see if we can't compare notes."

There's a laugh in there somewhere, at how every hunter has a touch of the melodramatic in him or her -- and some more than a touch, truth be told -- but it's early and Ellen is lonely and she's such a small, pointy-faced young woman. No older than Jo in years, and much younger in experience. "Well if you'd come to the wrong place I'd be calling Jimmy Stannis on you, he's the sheriff next county over and he's who I call when I think I got a couple of strung-out college kids trying to rob the till for their next fix." The woman stiffens, flushing, but the man next to her sits very still on his barstool. He's already heard the _if_ in that, or else he doesn't care one way or the other. "My name's Ellen, and I know everybody who comes through here."

They are as standoffish as any hunter she's met, and the woman is looking like she might win in a stubborn competition too. Ellen pulls out a couple of glasses and her secret smile. "What'll you have, then?"

The woman glances around, frowning. She isn't from around here, in the physical sense and maybe in the financial sense too. "You got lemonade, or juice? Something nonalcoholic?"

"Well this _is_ a bar," Ellen drawls, just to get a reaction. This is a little too easy. "But I got some coffee in the back. That do?"

"Yeah, thanks." The woman stands up and heads for the door. Ellen stares after her.

"We got our kid brother in the van," the man explains. "He's just eighteen, last week." He shrugs, and pales under Ellen's gaze. His black hair is thick on his head, cut in a messy shock around the crown. There's a tiny white line heading into his scalp from his temple. Now she knows to look for it, she can see the shiny scar tissue on his wrists too. He's been in some trouble. Which at least means they aren't whistling Dixie about hunting. The man forces a laugh and adds, "Don't want to expose him to the _criminal element_ if we don't have to."

Ellen puts a hand on her hip. "Bit late for that."

But that's the wrong thing to say. Ellen has seen a lot of family tragedy cross her threshold, widows avenging their husbands and sons their fathers, and once in a very great while a ragged man or a woman dragging in little kids, half-inclined to leave them behind and jump headlong into death. This young man, slim and shy as he is, isn't ready to give up the innocence of his kid brother. "He's a good kid," comes the protest, just as the door opens and that good kid comes lumbering in, his sister at his heels.

The boy isn't as tall as his older brother, but he's that kind of unbalanced shape that says he'd be bulky, if he ever sat down to enough meals in a row to satisfy him. His head is shaved, emphasizing the roundness of his face. The man and the woman by themselves, they might have been anybody, but with the boy added in they are _obviously_ a family, one-two-three in a row at the bar. The woman, settling in between those two wide sets of shoulders, has the same round face as one brother and the same stick-out ears as the other.

"I hear you're looking for some coffee." Ellen smiles at the boy, who scowls under an impressive pair of eyebrows, but sticks out a hand to shake.

"Ben," he says, and instantly his sister tenses beside him. Ellen pretends not to notice and shakes his hand politely. "We're the Collinses. He's Tom, and she's Haley."

"Well, I told your brother and sister already, but my name's Ellen. And I don't often get the underaged in my establishment, but if you can handle yourself I'm not looking for a hassle."

He eyes her, holds onto her grasp lingeringly. "We fought a night-spirit to a draw one time. I kept the fire, so it came at me first. I'm still alive."

"So I see. Congratulations," Ellen adds, and they let go of each other's hands with a weird new friendliness. "I'll just get you that coffee."

She comes back out to a low, hissing argument, Haley sticking out her chin at young Ben while Tom reaches behind his sister to rest a hand on the boy's shoulder. They straighten up in unison as they hear her approach, like scrubbed kids at a Catholic school, and maybe that's what they've been. Their coats hang together on the coattree, thick dark wool, gloves hanging out of the pockets. Ellen can imagine them, mittens on strings up their sleeves, wallowing in snowbanks, being called to heel to wipe a snot nose or two. And so, as she sets the mug down in front of Ben, she finds herself a little tender, asking, "Just the three of you, then? No mom or daddy?"

Haley gives a slow blink, something churning behind her eyes. When she does answer, it's like she's stepped over a threshold and into a home. "Our parents died a couple years ago. Is it mostly a family thing? Parents raising their kids in it?"

"Some, I guess." Ellen busies herself pulling beers for the older two, just to avoid their eyes. "But I get a lot of lonely bachelors through here. Times, some weekend nights, I wouldn't advise a young lady be here alone."

Behind a hand, Ben is smirking. Haley squares her shoulders, indignation in her cheeks. "But you work here alone, right?" she demands.

Ellen throws her head back and laughs. "I'm no young lady." She is pleased to see that, after a moment, Ben drops his hand and laughs openly, while the older one, Tom, lowers his head for a quiet chuckle. She lets them have a minute of that, till Haley is wound all the way up to argue and it's time to tell her what's what. "Some of 'em are awful rough, is what I'm saying. They hardly know how to set up under a roof, much less talk polite. It ain't often I have to pull out the shotgun under the bar, but --"

And Jo's leaving is overwhelming, then, an absence like the first quiet of snowfall. A lieutenant, a sidekick, a safe-haven and somebody to protect at the same time. They might have been partners, if the girl weren't so damned stubborn. Independent, like her father. Foolhardy. This coltish dark woman at the bar, with only two earnest boys to protect her, and she not even noticing their body language as they move to accommodate her swagger. Ellen wants to grab her by the forearms and shake her, or take her into the back and keep her warm.

"-- But I don't like to see somebody get shocked by it. Is all."

"No worry about that," Ben says low, and he's still got a bit of that smirk from before. Haley's about to turn round on him and rip him something awful when Tom leaps in to distract her:

"You ever heard of the Winchesters? Two guys, about my age? Drive a big black car."

Ellen sees the same surprise on Haley's face as she can feel on her own. Speaking of blindsided. "I guess they're good boys. Heard from them a couple weeks ago, someplace down in Texas."

"They saved my life," he says, bleak as an ice-puddle. "All our lives. That's how we got into it. The -- hunting thing." He blinks his dark eyes, head low, and finally buries his nose in his beer.

"Well," Ellen muses, "they got a habit of that, I guess. Reckless is what I call it."

The girl Haley sets her jaw. "We decided to do it on our own. They didn't make us do anything." Ellen is putting up her hands to fend off that angry loyalty and Haley talks over her: "They don't even know we're hunters, now. They didn't leave behind a phone number so we could pick their brains the next time out. We learned it all ourselves, trial and error."

Both boys are looking away, as if they've heard this before, as if they're a little annoyed at her need to testify. But Ellen is thinking of John Winchester, when he'd first arrived on her doorstep. Thirty-four years old, a great square block of man, like a penny in a furnace: new, bright, wreathed in ferocious energy. He was shocky at first, feral, a fight in every word and gesture, defending his life's work against people who had no mind to take it away from him. "Some of the best hunters are self-taught. They don't rely on received wisdom, that wisdom doesn't get 'em killed when it turns up wrong."

And that's the first time she and Haley see eye to eye, approving nods on their faces like looking in a mirror. Ellen realizes suddenly that Haley isn't sitting in the middle so her two brothers can protect her; she's sitting in the middle because they follow where she leads, flanking like any good soldier. Ben is smiling at their rapport, and reaches behind his sister to josh at Tom. Tom's not in a joshing mood, though.

"I guess," Ellen says, half-grudging, "you wouldn't have too much of a problem in this place, on a Saturday night." Daylight breaks over that woman's face, a smile that makes her look like a nice girl, like somebody who doesn't know a thing about the monsters that come out at night. No wonder she keeps a scowl on, most of the time. Truth be told, it's a little hard to take that sweet face seriously. Haley and her little brother elbow each other, comfortable side by side. They're excellent in a fight, Ellen wagers, knowing each other in and out. But Tom's still sitting there, long-faced, a little line between his brows to parallel the scar in his scalp. He gets out of his siblings' way, rather than join in.

"And you, son?" she asks at last, because it's clear Haley hasn't noticed. "You reckon on spending your Saturday nights in places like this?"

There's a falling-off then, an awkward quiet, and Ellen's stumbled over a sore spot in these kids. After a minute Tom leans forward, elbows on the bar, and says clearly, "I can take it."

"Not everybody who's in the know is a hunter," she cautions. She's talking to Tom, but she can feel Haley's cold attention as she speaks. "I got contacts in arms dealers, and herbalists, and palm readers, and plenty of folks like me, just a warm meal and a roof now and then. There's no shame in hanging up the shotgun if it don't suit you."

Tommy gives a little shrug. "Where she goes, I go." And that's it, as far as he seems to be concerned. Haley's gone to sharp white edges again, as if she's got to defend his choices, but Ben frowns and touches her elbow before she can speak. They sit there in uncomfortable silence for a long minute.

"Well," Ellen mumbles, feeling old. "I guess you made your choice. Girl," and she fixes her eye on Haley. "If he ever wants to quit someday, you'll have to let him. Not everybody's up for it like you and the young one, here."

"If he wants to," Haley allows at last. It doesn't sound like she thinks that would ever happen.

Ellen's not the kind to stick her nose into other people's business. Even so, she finds herself brushing her fingers against Tom's hand on the bar. "I can always use a bouncer, Saturday nights. If it comes to that." Tom glances down at his hand, and then up at her face, and then away, too shy or too resolved to take her at her word. "Hell, you stick around long enough the Winchesters are bound to show up again someday."

"They're good guys," Tom insists, as if he doubts it himself. Haley puts her forearm next to his, just touching, a warm body he can lean against while he's shaky. He turns his face to her the way scrawny saplings chase the winter sun.

"They're not the sharpest knives in the drawer," Ellen chuckles, "but they'll do."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [**spn_xx**](http://spn-xx.livejournal.com/profile), a challenge to promote female characters. Prompt #144: "Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from." (Mae West)


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